Merchandise tie-ins and other licensing deals have been an essential marketing tool for decades. For movies, it dates back at least to Walt Disney, who made a licensing deal with a Switzerland company for Mickey and Minnie Mouse handkerchiefs in the late 1920s. Another example is William Boyd’s Hopalong Cassidy films, which began in the 1930s and led to dozens of tie-in products such as kids’ lunch boxes.Television made a huge splash in the merchandising game in the 1950s with Superman, The Lone Ranger, and Fess Parker as Davy Crockett on the Disneyland TV series. Not surprisingly, savvy television producers were quick to partner with comic book publishers. Dell Comics and later Gold Key Comics led the way with tie-ins of popular shows. Many of them were based on youth-oriented TV series (e.g., Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea), but there were also comic book tie-ins with adult fare like Dr. Kildare, Mission: Impossible, and Burke’s Law.
In fact, a recent Café post on Burke’s Law inspired my sister to look for some of the classic TV comic books she bought as a youth. I had a blast looking at these covers and wanted to share them with Café readers.
You can enlarge any of the covers by clicking on them. Note the German officer pictured next to Chris George in The Rat Patrol cover is Hans Gudegast. He later changed his name to Eric Braeden and gained fame as Victor Newman on The Young and the Restless.
